American Indians and Alaska Natives owned nearly 201,400 nonfarm U.S. businesses in 2002, employed about 191,300 persons, and generated $26.9 billion in business revenues. These American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms accounted for 0.9 percent of all nonfarm businesses in the United States, almost 0.2 percent of their employment, and more than 0.1 percent of their receipts.

The 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) defines American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned businesses as firms in which American Indians and Alaska Natives own 51 percent or more of the stock, equity, or interest of the business. The data in this report were collected as part of the 2002 Economic Census from a large sample of individual proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations with receipts of $1,000 or more.

In 2002, nearly 3-in-10 American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms operated in construction and other services, such as personal services, and repair and maintenance. Construction and retail trade accounted for 41.0 percent or $11.0 billion of all American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned business revenue.

Five states, California, Oklahoma, Texas, New York, and Florida, accounted for 45.9 percent or 92,507 American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms in 2002. These same five states accounted for 40.5 percent or $10.9 billion of all American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned business revenue Table A shows the number of American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms in these states compared to all businesses in the state.

Table B, Table C, and Table D, respectively, show the three combined statistical areas, one county, and three cities with the largest number of American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms and compare the firms and receipts for the county and cities with the numbers in their corresponding states.

Twelve percent of all American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms had paid employees and accounted for 81.8 percent of gross receipts. The average receipts for these employer firms was $897,489.

There were 3,631 American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more. These firms accounted for 1.8 percent of the total number of American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms and more than 64.2 percent of their total receipts.

There were 178 American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms with 100 employees or more, generating almost $5.3 billion in gross receipts (almost 24.0 percent of the total revenue for American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned employer firms).

Firms that reported ownership by an American Indian tribal entity in 2002 are considered to be government-owned entities, and are therefore excluded from the estimates of American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms. Since this distinction was not made in the 1997 survey, direct data comparisons cannot be made between the 2002 SBO and its previous survey.

The kind-of-business data for 2002 for American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms are not comparable to 1997 due to the transition from the 1987 Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system to the 2002 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Additional changes affecting data comparability are discussed in detail in Methodology, in the section titled "Comparability of the 2002 and 1997 SBO Data."